The Time Bubble Box Set 2

by Jason Ayres

  I sat alone on the quiet train, as far away from other people as possible. I must have had a guilty conscience because I kept imagining that everybody who walked past was looking at me accusingly, branding me a murderer with their eyes. I kept my head down, keen to hide my face, not even looking up when the guard came to clip my ticket.

  What if they had managed to track me on CCTV all the way to Oxford station and had seen me getting on the train? Would they be waiting to arrest me at Hereford station?

  I was getting a bit paranoid. I clearly wasn’t thinking straight, as it was highly unlikely anyone would be looking for me so soon. Even so, I convinced myself that going to Hereford was too risky so I decided to get off the train at the next stop, which was at Evesham.

  It was dark, wet and cold and all I wanted was a room for the night. With no phone, I had no way of finding out what was available, so just had to walk through the town until I found somewhere.

  There was a large hotel opposite the station but I ignored that. My experience was that these sorts of places rarely took bookings in cash, and even if they did would want some sort of ID.

  I needed something more anonymous like a small family B&B or a pub. I didn’t rate my chances of finding either at this time of night and at this time of the year. It was hardly tourist season. But if I didn’t find something soon I might face the unwelcome prospect of spending the night outside.

  I ran through the options in my head. If I had been totally desperate, I could have gone to a pub, pulled some random bloke and then let him take me home for the night. But there was no way I was going to do that. In my mind, it was bordering on prostitution.

  The mere fact I had even considered it as a possibility was bad enough. Had I really sunk that low – sex just to get a bed for the night? Hadn’t I slagged about enough already today? What the hell was I turning into?

  No, there was no way I was lowering myself to that level. I would rather freeze outside. Was it to come to that? Was I about to experience what it was like to be a homeless person in the middle of winter? Well, if I was, it was no more than I deserved, quite frankly.

  I couldn’t find anywhere in town that fitted my needs so I decided to just find a pub where I could at least be warm and have a drink. Even that proved problematical, as many of them had private parties on for New Year and were ticket only.

  Eventually I found a nice old-fashioned boozer down the far end of the town with no entry restrictions. It was packed with locals enjoying a karaoke night.

  Safely In the warm at last, even if it was only temporary, I got a couple of double vodkas inside me and then asked the landlord if he knew of any nearby hotels, neatly blaming why I was stranded in Evesham on a broken-down car. It was a plausible enough excuse, but it was lying, of course, something I else I frowned upon but was now being reduced to.

  Fortunately I was in luck. The pub had rooms which they occasionally let out upstairs and they agreed to let me stay the night, cash upfront, with no need for any ID. All they did was ask me my name, to which I replied with the first thing that came into my head: Helen. Another lie!

  It was a great relief knowing I wouldn’t have to sleep outside, not that I got a lot of sleeping done. I spent most of the night tossing and turning, racked with remorse for the events of the previous day.

  Now it was the following morning, and I was still up in the room, trying to work out how to get through this last day before I moved on. Accommodation wouldn’t be as big a problem tonight because I’d be jumping back in time at 3am, so I could probably stay up until that time, even if I did have to spend a couple of hours outside after the pubs shut.

  I had planned to slip away from the pub quietly but my hosts insisted on giving me breakfast, which was very kind. Both they and the locals the previous evening had been very welcoming towards me. Their hospitality had got me through a difficult time and I could now face the day ahead with renewed strength.

  Before I left I did have one slight problem when the landlord informed me that his brother was a mechanic who would be visiting that afternoon and would be only too pleased to take a look at my car for me. I initially tried to refuse, saying they had done more than enough for me already, but he refused to take no for an answer.

  In the end I agreed, saying I wanted to spend a little time exploring Evesham and that I would be back later. Of course, the car was non-existent, so I had no intention of returning.

  More lies, I thought. Once you started telling a few, it seemed you couldn’t get out of it. One naturally led to another. That was all going to stop tomorrow. I was going to wipe the slate clean and start again.

  Since I had time to kill I decided I may as well have a look around Evesham, as I had only seen it in darkness the previous evening. It was one of those rare things you get in midwinter – a sunny and relatively mild morning which was a welcome relief from the endless cold weather I was usually stuck with.

  Across the road from the pub were some very pretty old medieval buildings with exposed timber beams. I walked towards stopping to read the plaques on the walls about their history. Then I walked through a churchyard and into a pretty little park which led down towards the River Avon which passed through Evesham.

  Alongside the river was a lovely tree-lined avenue which reminded me of walking down to the river in Christ Church Meadow in Oxford. The trees were bare now but I imagined they must look very pretty in full leaf during the summer.

  It was quiet and calm down here which was exactly what I needed to calm my nerves and give me time to think. I sat down on a bench and watched as a couple of rowers went by, dressed in all the proper gear, clearly training for some sort of event. Maybe they had races here, like in Henley.

  I knew that I had wasted my time pursuing revenge over Rob. From now on I needed to do something more constructive with my time. As I sat soaking up the weak, winter sunlight, I realised that what I longed for more than anything was to feel the heat of the sun on my face again in a warm part of the world. My life expectancy was short and I didn’t want to spend it all stuck in the middle of an English winter.

  I knew that there were a couple of years I would be abroad at New Year, but they were a long way off and I didn’t want to wait. Tomorrow I would have 48 hours to play with. I could almost fly to the other side of the world and back in that time.

  It was time to make a positive decision. Starting tomorrow, I would jet off and see the world. I had nothing else planned for the next few years, so why not?

  Obviously I couldn’t book any flights or make any advance arrangements, but that could all be sorted on the day. As long as I had my passport and credit card, the world was my oyster. Well, at least the world that I could reach in a reasonable flight time was my oyster. I didn’t want to spend half my life in airports or on planes.

  That was the next few trips sorted, but what of today? I was at a serious loose end, with only the clothes I was dressed in and the cash I was carrying. Having left in such a hurry, I hadn’t brought so much as a toothbrush with me and I was also still dressed in what I had travelled in yesterday. Although I had had a shower at the pub, I still felt like a total skank.

  I walked back into town. Most of the shops were shut but I found a convenience store that was open where I bought a toothbrush, toothpaste and a can of deodorant. Then I walked back to some public toilets I had seen in the park so that I could at least attend to my basic hygiene needs.

  That it should come to this – brushing my teeth in a public toilet like some sort of vagrant and on my birthday as well. This really was a low. Recriminations and regrets began to flood through my mind again. Maybe some decent food would take my mind off things. Despite the bacon and eggs I had consumed at the pub, I already felt hungry again.

  I walked back to the High Street, looking for somewhere to eat that was open on New Year’s Day, eventually finding a small café which was serving. There I ordered myself a plate of good old English fish and chips. This was something that always mad
e me feel better, reminding me as it did of my childhood.

  When I was a kid and we lived in Liverpool, my mum worked on Saturdays, leaving Dad to look after me and Rachel. He was under instructions to cook us something healthy for lunch but instead always took us to this wonderful chippy in West Derby. It had place mats with snakes and ladders on them which Rachel and I used to play with while we waited for our chips. I’ve never tasted any as good anywhere else since.

  Having said that, the chips in this place were awesome, certainly the best I’d had in years. I started to relax, the comforting food helping to take the edge off my guilt and worry over recent events. But it was not to last long. Halfway through devouring my chips, along with a succulent piece of cod, I saw something that almost made me shake with fear.

  I was sitting opposite a large-screen TV on the wall at the end of the café which was broadcasting rolling news from the BBC. The volume was muted but the subtitles were on. I had been idly watching the lead story which predictably was about the New Year celebrations. In my life, that was always the lead story. As I watched the usual shots of fireworks exploding outside Big Ben, they cut to a new story, including a shot of a very familiar-looking street.

  It took only a split second for the realisation to kick in that this was Jeune Street. There was my house, large as life, with police tape all around it. As I read the subtitles popping up beneath I found myself almost gasping for air in shock at what I was seeing.

  Police have launched a murder investigation after a man’s body was discovered at a house in Oxford.

  36-year-old Gary Welby was found dead when officers were called to an address on Jeune Street, at around 6.35pm on New Year’s Eve. He had bled to death from a wound to the neck.

  Detectives are treating the incident as murder.

  A local man who has not been named was arrested at the scene, but later released without bail. Police are currently seeking a woman in connection with the crime. 34-year-old Amy Reynolds, who it is believed lived at the address, has not been seen since the crime.

  As the last sentence was read out, a picture of me appeared on the screen. I recognised it straight away – it was my profile picture from Facebook and had only recently been taken. This was all I needed, sitting in a crowded café with people all around. I bowed my head, and pulled my hood up, trying to look inconspicuous while the rest of the story played out. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that, as I couldn’t have made myself look guiltier if I had tried.

  When I looked up again, I knew I was in trouble.

  Not everyone had been paying attention to the TV. There were a lot of young families in the café and most of the parents were far too busy trying to keep their children under control and getting them to eat to watch television.

  But as I turned and looked around, I saw the waitress who had served me leaning in close to another woman at the till, whispering something into her ear. Both of them turned to look at me.

  Had they seen? They must have. Had anyone else? I looked around the room, catching the eye of an elderly couple at the next table that had been enjoying the pensioner lunchtime special. Both were looking at me.

  Glancing back to the till, I could see the woman there tapping her phone screen, then holding it to her ear. Calling the police?

  What I did next probably wasn’t the wisest move, but I was panicking and just flipped. If the pensioners and the staff had any lingering doubts over whether I was or wasn’t the woman on TV, they were about to be swiftly dispelled.

  “Had a good look, have you?” I snapped at the old couple as I leapt out of my chair. I needed to get out of this place and fast. I ran for the door, knocking over some kid’s pushchair which was blocking the aisle in the process. I didn’t bother apologising – the kid wasn’t in it, after all: he was in a high chair. Why couldn’t people fold the damned things up when they weren’t using them?

  Nobody tried to stop me as I made my exit, in fact they didn’t even shout after me about the bill. Perhaps they didn’t fancy tackling a suspected murderess. So that meant I hadn’t paid for my food, so that was stealing to add to my ever-mounting charge sheet.

  In just a few seconds, I was out through the door and running down the High Street, not looking back and not really sure what to do next.

  There was a bus stop a hundred yards or so down the road, and the last person was just getting onto the bus. I ran for the bus and hopped on, without even looking to see where it was going. At least it made my running look less suspicious – after all, people run for buses all the time.

  “Where to, love?” asked the driver, in a Scouse accent. At any other time I would have been glad to encounter a fellow Scouser, but not today. I didn’t want to prolong the conversation any longer than necessary or give away any clues as to my origins. I’m not sure if the police would include “Scouse accent” in any description going around about me, but I wasn’t taking any risks.

  Toning down my accent so he wouldn’t clock where I was from, I said.

  “I don’t know. Where does this bus go?”

  As soon as I had said it, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

  “Cheltenham,” he replied, looking at me quizzically and then adding, “You know, most people normally know where they want to go when they get on a bus.”

  “Cheltenham is it, then,” I replied.

  The bus was packed and I had to walk all the way to the back to find a seat. As I did so, I scanned the passengers, looking for any sign that they recognised me from the news. One or two looked up at me as I passed but there was no hint of recognition. Most were too engrossed in what they were doing – either fiddling around on their phones or away in their own little worlds, courtesy of their headphones.

  I was safe – for the moment – but my relief was not to last long. Someone must have followed me out of the café and seen me get on the bus.

  When I arrived at the bus station in Cheltenham, the police were waiting for me.

  Chapter Eleven

  2014

  It was 4pm in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve and I was stretched out by the pool at a hotel in Gran Canaria, soaking up the gorgeous afternoon sunshine. Tomorrow, it would be my 29th birthday.

  Roughly a week had passed in my own personal timeline since the traumatic events surrounding Gary’s death and I was now a further four years back in the past. Still feeling awful about what happened, I consoled myself with the thought that in this time, he was still alive.

  I had even sent him a text message just to make sure, which was illogical because of course he would be, but it eased my troubled mind. Whilst the traumatic events of that awful day were printed indelibly on my mind, they simply hadn’t happened yet, belonging as they did to only one possible future. Perhaps they never would.

  I had well and truly learnt my lesson as far as Rob was concerned and had spent my last few trips getting as far away from him and Oxford as possible.

  After I had been arrested by the police in Cheltenham, I was taken to the station, checked in, and put in an interview room. They read me my rights at which point I asked for a solicitor to be present. I was just stalling for time really, waiting for 3am to come round when I could be the first person in history to escape police custody by being whisked out of the station into the time vortex.

  My solicitor, a bored-looking man in his late-thirties called Colin, advised me to say nothing in response to their questions. He didn’t seem to want to be there any more than I did, looking every inch a man who would rather be at home watching the telly.

  In the end, the two police officers interviewing me became frustrated at my lack of responses and sent me down to the cells for the night. As they did so, they warned me that if I didn’t start talking by the morning, I’d be charged with murder.

  That’s what they thought. It was the first, and hopefully the last, night I would ever spend in a police station in my life. The cell was pretty basic, just a small, square room with a single bunk next to the wall. Unlike ce
lls I had seen on TV, the toilet was in a separate en suite area and even had a seat! I had stayed in worse youth hostels when I had been trekking around Australia during my gap year.

  The room service was efficient, if the quality of the food left a little to be desired. It consisted of a couple of greasy sausages and some mash in a plastic tray. The whole thing reminded me of an airline meal, right down to the plastic cutlery which was presumably to stop me self-harming. Sadly there was no wine on offer, as I could have really done with some after the two days I had just had.

  Perhaps being arrested had been a blessing. At least I had somewhere warm and dry to spend the night – well, the first half of the night, anyway. The small, basic mattress was surprisingly comfortable and I soon curled up and went to sleep.

  The next thing I knew, I was in the nurses’ office back at the hospital, sitting with Tessa, my nursing friend with a weakness for food. True to form, she was busy munching her way through a box of mince pies.

  “Do you want one, Amy?” she asked. “I don’t think I can manage all six.”

  “Just the one, then,” I replied, relieved to be back in such familiar and safe surroundings. I took one and pecked at it daintily while she wolfed them down like there was no tomorrow. She wasn’t looking as big as I was used to seeing her, having gained weight as the years had gone by. It wasn’t difficult to see why when she was carrying on like this.

  “You want to take it easy on those,” I admonished gently. “Do you know how many calories they have? It’s a moment on the lips, but a lifetime on the hips.”

  That had been one of my mother’s favourite sayings.

  “I know. I’m going on a diet for New Year,” she pronounced.

  I knew she wouldn’t stick to it, she never did. There was no point in me saying any more. I needed to get moving if I was going to make the most of my travel plans.